Burrowing Owls

Last week I visited a small Black-tailed Prairie Dog town north of Glasgow. As I approached the town, I noticed a couple of Burrowing Owls fly from on burrow to another. As I got closer to the town and started driving on the trail through the burrows more Burrowing Owls began to pop up all over the place. I estimated there were at least 25, and quite possibly more, Burrowing Owls living there that day. Often I had ten birds in view at once. They all appeared to be young of the year, suggesting that reproduction may have been really good this year. Perhaps because of the high numbers of grasshoppers around this year. I am not sure if they were all produced on this small town or if some of them had already begun their migration south and wound up here for the time being, but either way it was an impressive pile of Burrowing Owls.

One More Dowitcher

I just realized I had a couple more photos of the bird that started the dowitcher discussion. Here is one that I think will help with the ID. For my two cents on this bird, I think this photo shows an overall rounded humpback shape (like it swallowed a grapefruit) that is more suggestive of a Long-billed Dowitcher than a Short-billed. This has been a good exercise for me in learning more about the confusion and contradiction in dowitcher ID as well as learning that others suffer from dowitcher ID depression.



And just to keep things interesting, here are three more photos from the day before that I think may be Short-billed Dowitchers, again based on the posture and shape (slimmer and no grapefruit in the gut). These were taken from a distance away and the light was horrible. I have lightened the photos considerably just to be able to see some color and detail on the bird. Comments on this one?


The bird just right of center.


Detail of the photo above


Another photo of the bird picture above.

Dowitcher, but Which One?

Yesterday I posted the photo above and labeled it as a Long-billed Dowitcher (Limnodromus scolopaceus). I also posted the photo to our Montana birding group site with the same ID. This morning I received a note from my friend Dan Casey concerning my ID. He thought it might be a Short-billed Dowitcher (Limnodromus griseus hendersoni), a subspecies most likely on the prairies and most similar to Long-billed Dowitchers. I have to confess that I hate trying to ID fall dowitchers and defaulted to Long-billed after a quick glance and my interpretation of the overall shape as being more rounded. I have paraphrased Dan's comments below:

Subtle but apparent "kink" to the outward third of the bill.
Distinctly spotted breast sides.
Slender build
Relatively few "breeding" wing coverts.
It is a bit sparsly marked on the flanks for a Short-billed Dowitcher but I think the other features outweigh that, and hendersoni should have the least here anyway.
What little we see of the tail is inconclusive, but may indicate that the white bars are equal in width to the black bars, tipping slightly towards Short-billed.

I also received comments on the bird from Caleb Putnam too. Caleb thought that this was a tricky individual to ID, but was leaning towards a Short-billed Dowitcher as well.

Both Dan and Caleb asked if I had more photos and I have added a number of them below (click on the photos to get a larger version). There were about 20 individuals on the reservoir that morning and I am not sure if any of the new photos show the individual Dan and Caleb commented on.
If you have any comments on the identification of these dowitchers I would appreciate hearing them.


A few of the group of dowitchers and a few other species.


Photo 1.


Photo 2 ( a bit blurry but may still helpful)


Photo 3.


Photo 4.


Photo 5 (same bird as photo 4).


Photo 6.


Photo 7 (same bird as in photo 6).

I will readily admit that I struggle with identifying these species and I am trying to get better so any help on the ID of these birds is appreciated.

No Ice for the Prairie Guy

This winter will be a bit different than most of the winters for the past 15 years. I will not be heading south to The Ice this year. No Antarctica. Schedules and staffing finally caught up to me and I am on the sidelines this year. It is going to be hard, but I knew that it was going to catch up with me sooner or later. Hopefully next year will work out and I can get my penguin, whale, ice and albatross fix then. Until then I will have to settle for looking at my photos from past trips. I might even have to work in a few stories from past years and scan a few slides from my pre digital trips south.

Shorebird Season

Shorebird habitat is hard to find around here this year. Lots of water during the spring and summer (except June) had resulted in full ponds with lots of vegetation right to the current waterline which eliminates the mud flats and exposed shorelines favored by this group of birds.
I did manage to find one pond that had a rather limited patch of favored foraging conditions and I spent a few minutes taking some photos. The Long-billed Dowitcher pictured above was one of the species I found.


Least Sandpiper - these were probably the most numerous of the shorebirds at the reservoir I was at.


Least Sandpiper


Least Sanpiper


Pectoral Sandpiper


Pectoral Sandpiper - looks like he is spitting. Must have been a bad bug.

I really wanted to get some photos of the Stilt Sandpipers and I was able to do so.


Itchy ear.


I managed to catch the bird above with a small worm or larvae in the tip of it's bill.


I have lots of photos like this, only with less head exposed on a majority of them.



There were also Baird's and Semipalmated Sandpipers in the mix but I only managed to get a few photos of one Baird's (below).

Morning Commuters

This is one of the guys I regularly see in the morning. He and the rest of his friends are usually heading home as the sun comes up and I am heading to work.

Ferruginous Hawks

A few weeks ago I was heading down a dirt road and when I came over the hill there was a recently fledged brood of 5 young Ferruginous Hawk clustered in the middle of the road with both parents circling above. They all flushed before I could stop and wound up sitting on a nearby hill. They seemed to not be used to being apart and wound up clustered there as well. As I watched they flushed, one by one, to the nearby nest.





The adults kept circling me, letting me know they were still watching.



Later in the day another flew by.



The Ferruginous Hawk is one of our most common breeding hawks, along with the Swainson's Hawk and the Northern Harrier. This one was nesting at the end of a raptor survey route I ran with Dad early in June.



Shortly after seeing the Ferruginous Hawks that day I found this larger cousin, an immature Golden Eagle, circling in an updraft with a Northern Harrier.